Say Something, I'm Giving Up On You
by clarabranson
Summary: Severus Snape is extremely ill with pneumonia and a stomach flu over Christmas break at Hogwarts. Dumbledore has put him in the charge of Clara Branson to mend his drenched lungs. Severus SnapexOC oneshot OOC Severus Snape


Severus Snape lied in his bed dying, deep in the dungeons of Hogwarts. At least, it felt as though he were dying. He could hardly breathe, and when he did manage to breathe, he hacked and coughed. He twisted and turned, waiting. It had to be almost four in the morning. He had never felt so ill in his life. The Christmas Holidays had begun days ago, leaving the castle deserted. It was only Filch and he left in the castle – everyone had gone home for the holidays. It wasn't that he didn't understand it; this was the first holiday since the fall of the Dark Lord. Every family wanted their children home to celebrate properly for the first time perhaps in years. It wasn't surprising to him in the least that no one remained.

He coughed, his entire body contracting with hacking. As much as he despised the idea, he had considered writing to Dumbledore and have Madam Pomfrey come back to tend to him, but decided against it. Besides, he could hardly lift a quill.

Suddenly, the Potions Master could hear someone's approaching footsteps in the hallway adjacent to his quarters. Perhaps Dumbledore had come back for the Christmas Feast, he thought hopefully. Maybe it was just a house-elf to tend the fireplace. He closed his eyes, listening to the clicking footsteps realizing they were boots approaching. It must be Dumbledore.

When his bedroom door opened, he realized he was wrong in his assumption. Dumbledore didn't smell so much like lady's perfume. He opened his eyes to find a woman in his bedroom. She had an oval face with a button nose and a cupid's bow mouth with blue-gray eyes that looked into his black ones. Her hair was long, nearly to her waist. It was wavy and the color of honey. She reminded him of those insipid porcelain dolls that little girls sometimes carried with them. The woman wore black robes, her black boots clicking across the floor as she crossed to his bed. She was beautiful in an almost impossible way. Her eyes reminded him of Dumbledore's. As she looked deep into his eyes, he felt as though she were looking straight through to his soul.

"You don't remember me," she said softly, almost in a whisper. Severus quickly looked away.

"You're a Legilimens," he replied, realizing what she had done.

"Mhmm-hmm," she answered as she reached out her hand, "And an Occlumens." She touched his forehead with her hand, as he automatically tried to retreat from her touch. She frowned at him.

"You have one wicked temperature," she said softly, removing her hand. If he wasn't mistaken, this woman had an American accent.

"Who _are_ you?" he asked before coughing and wheezing in her face.

"The Ghost of Christmas Past," she said, her English accent reining again and with a wicked smile on her face. His eyes narrowed in on her and after a moment, her face fell to a more serious tone.

"I'm here to insure you get well," she replied as she looked down, fetching something from her pocket. "You have something serious, Severus," she said, looking at the silver pocket watch. "I'll be back soon. Your private stores are in the Potions classroom, aren't they?"

"Don't you dare –" he began, but she was already gone, out the door and presumably into the next room where he had extra cauldrons and ingredients. He huffed in his bed, knowing that even if he did get out of bed, there was little he could do to the strange woman. Magic didn't work nearly as well when the caster was sick.

He had almost fallen back asleep when she returned, a handful of vials hanging in between each of her fingers. She gave him a soft smile as she sat down on the edge of his bed and held out the hand with the vials.

"You need to drink these in these in this order," she said, plucking the first vial from between her index and middle finger and giving it to him to drink. Severus smelled it, cautiously, eyeing the woman before he did what she requested of him. He went through the short row of bottles in her hand, swallowing them all only after he had identified them.

She was very gifted with Potion making, he could tell from the quality of the potions she had given him. Whoever she was, she had the ability to brew some very difficult Potions with perfection – all three of the ones she had given him were NEWT level or higher. His eyelids became heavy, and he knew it was due to the last potion she had given him, which had been a potion to help him sleep.

"Good night, Severus," she whispered as she got up off the bed. He was already asleep by the time she left the bedroom and went to the next room to put his potions room back to the way she found it.

When Severus awoke next, he thought perhaps the woman had been a dream – something his fever-bent mind had conjured in his uneasy sleep. But the sleep he had awoken from had been the best he had had in months, not his usual tossing and turning for a few hours before rising again. He looked up to the mantelpiece for the time, but instead saw the mysterious lady sitting in a chair by the fire with a book in her hand. Her hair had changed over the course of his sleeping. It was black now, with a stripe of white near her right temple. She looked familiar to him now, her hair and her face trying to remind him of something. However, the precise thing he was trying to remember couldn't seem to be recalled, as though he had forgotten it, but the trace of her image remained.

"Sleep well, Sev?" she asked, her eyes not parting form the words in her small leather bound book.

"Don't call me that," he snapped back at her, his voice growly with having freshly woken up, and he sat up at little in the bed.

"Did you sleep well?" she repeated the question, her face a stone wall to his abrupt reply, her eyes still in her book.

"Yes," he answered finally. She put a bookmark in the book and stood up, crossing the room to the trunk that stood at the end of his four-poster bed. She produced a bed tray and set it on the bed before him. She lifted a cover, to reveal a bowl of hot soup and plate of toast.

"Who are you?" he asked, grabbing her wrist weakly as she went to move back to her seat by the fireplace.

"Clara Branson." she answered, looking down at his hand around her wrist. "Dumbledore sent me to look after you."

"Why did he send you?" he sneered at her, keeping his grip on her as best as he could. She looked back into his black eyes, but did not try to work past them with her Legilimency.

"I can only guess that he did not want to cut anyone else's holiday short by calling them back to the castle to see that you get better," she said as she wriggled her wrist from his hold. She tapped her wand to his pillows, which took him from his repose to a sitting position and the tray sliding up towards him.

"Eat your soup," she said. He glared at her as she sat back down and picked up the book again. "Stop being childish and eat, Severus. I'm not above treating you like a two-year old and feeding you myself…"

He began to dip his toast in the tomato soup, his eyes still primarily looking at the woman sitting in his room. He knew he had heard her name before, but he couldn't remember where. It was probably here, at Hogwarts. If it weren't for her accent, which began English and then bled into American or visa versa, occasionally with what sounded more like a Scottish, or a Welsh, or even an Irish accent, he would be sure that they had been at school together at some point. She looked as though she had just graduated, her face looked so young. Perhaps she had been a first year during one of his later years. There was something about her that bothered Snape on a deep level, somewhere. But he couldn't remember why he would be feeling it. Perhaps it was worse. Perhaps it was the last few years, his days as a Death Eater, from which he knew her.

"What are you reading?" he asked silkily, his eyes tired from trying to read the cover. She looked up at him with a secret smile before sitting a little straighter.

"_And indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air—look you,_" she quoted, her lifted hand showing the air around them in the dungeon bedroom, Severus's face relaxing from his usual stony expression as she continued, entranced by the words she read aloud with conviction and feeling.

"_This brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire—why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me. No, nor woman neither,_" she said, with a glittering in her solemn deep blue eyes.

"It's a play," she said after a moment of Severus's searching eyes. And from the way his eyes had looked at her in those brief vulnerable moments after she had finished, she knew that he had connected to the speech. In fact, she would bet that he related to the passage very well, as if they were his own feelings.

"And a very famous one at that – have you ever heard of _To Be or Not to Be_?" she asked him. The Potion Master shook his head.

"It's probably the most famous speech in English Literature. Hmm, perhaps when I get that far, I'll read it out to you."

Severus ate his lunch in silence, staring at Clara Branson in the corner. She was so familiar to him, and he could not think why. As he finished his soup, it was becoming intolerable to him.

"If you want to know, just ask, Severus," she murmured from her book, not looking up from the pages. His eyes pierced her, wondering how she known what he had been thinking when she hadn't even been looking at him.

"Why –" he began.

"We were at school together," she said softly. "You and I were in the same year. I think the only class we shared together was OWL and NEWT level Potions…"

Now Severus could remember her. She had been the strange black haired girl with the random white streak along the top right side of her head. The other students had called her a skunk in their early years because she had kept her hair pulled back, even though she had never smelled anything but that of flowers. She was a Ravenclaw, and probably the smartest person in their class. She had been the one that always beat out Lily and him for the highest marks of the year. But she was quiet, she only answered questions that no one could or would answer in classes. Perhaps it was because of her American accent, which had made her an automatic outsider to them all. But she had seemed perfectly content with her status as an outsider. She didn't have friends to speak of, but she always had a serene smile on her face and a small smile for anyone who would look her way.

"Here you go," Clara said returning to the room, the same three vials hanging from last night in between her fingers again. He began to sneer at her.

"I feel fine," he replied.

"Yes, you feel fine now, but that's only because the potions I gave you last night haven't worn off yet." Severus's sneer remained on his face, obviously unconvinced. She smiled and shrugged, putting the vials on the bedside table and sat back in the chair.

"I believe you can go now," Severus said forcefully.

"I can't," she replied, picking up her book. "It's going to get worse before it gets better, much worse. Besides, I was instructed not to leave you until I am positive that you are back to full health. You still are not fit enough to leave your bed."

"And are you a medi-witch?"

"No."

"Then I really don't see how you are qualified to tell me that I am not well enough to not have to suffer your company."

"Doesn't matter. I'm here until the term starts again, Severus."

Severus sulked for a moment before lying back down in his bed and turned over, his face turned away from her. He dozed in and out of sleep for about a half an hour before his cough hit him again like a train. He curled up into a ball as he hacked; his lungs felt like they were on fire. She crossed the room again, sitting on his bed and reaching over him to feel his forehead.

"Your fever still hasn't gone down," she said, reaching for the vials on the table as he turned onto his back. She put the first to his lips, but the stubborn man pursed his lips, not allowing the bottle to pass his lips. Clara steeled her eyes, and with her other hand, pinched his nose together. After a moment, Severus gasped for air, and Clara poured the potion down his throat. She reached for the second, and found that Severus hadn't the stupidity to try and fight her again, letting her press the second to his mouth. She looked away again as Severus searched his peculiar nurse's face. Her hand returned with a tall cup with a straw sticking out of it.

"Drink. It'll help," she replied, putting the cup in his hand. He looked to the last bottle on the nightstand, but she was ready with an answer. "I'll not put you to sleep again so soon, Severus."

"Very well, Skunk," he sneered and her face fell a little. She leaned in towards him, as though to tell him a great secret.

"Severus Snape, you are seriously ill. If you do not let me treat you, you will die before the New Year. I would not, if I were in your position, insult me. You may not live much longer if you continue to call me that," she said calmly and evenly.

Clara finished with a sad look on her face and rose from the bed, not making eye contact with him again as she returned to the fireplace. She collapsed into the armchair, looking up wearily from below her eyebrows.

"Do you want to know why Dumbledore sent me?" she asked, her voice quiet and broken as her gray eyes peered at him.

"Because no one else would come; I'm the last person Dumbledore would ever bring back into the country, even as it is."

"Even as _what_ is?" Snape snapped back at her.

"Oh, you haven't a clue," she whispered to herself, her head dropping to her chest, her hand touching her forehead.

"A clue about what?"

"You must forgive me, Severus, but I cannot tell you," she said with a sigh. She looked up at him to wave her wand at him. He flinched at the light from the spell, but found a large silver bowl floating in front of him. Before he begin to try and fathom why it was there, he began retching into it, his entire lunch going in the bowl. When he looked up again, Clara was standing next to him with a damp towel with which to clean himself up. With another wave of her wand, the sick in the bowl vanished, and she handed him the cup with the straw once again.

"I'm going to go to the kitchens and see if I can find some crackers or something that you can keep down." He gave a nod, accepting as she left the room.

Severus sipped the strange sweet drink in the cup, not able to recognize it. It made him feel better, like he thought nothing would at this point. It seemed like the mere presence of Clara was making him feel better. Perhaps it was merely the fact that she offered a distraction from how he felt. He, although he would never admit it, kind of liked this weird woman.

"Voila!" she said, returning with a tray aloft in her hand. Mattie placed it down in his lap, a dinner plate filled with saltine crackers on it.

"It looks delicious."

"I know, I outdid myself, if I do say so," she returned with a smile, playing along with him. She grabbed her book, before sitting back down in the chair, watching him poke at his plate of crackers.

"You need to eat something, Severus. And since you can't even keep down soup and toast, I'm downgrading you to crackers. Go on." He ate the crackers and sucked down the bubbly liquid in the cup as she read her leather bound book at his feet. Normally he wouldn't allow anyone other than himself in his room, but surprisingly, he didn't care that she was there. It was actually comforting having her close, which he couldn't say of anyone else he knew or remotely enjoyed their presence. Perhaps it was because she reminded him so much of Dumbledore.

"What's your parentage?" he asked smoothly.

"Same as yours," she answered, closing the book on her finger. "Witch mother, Muggle father. Actually, our parents are frighteningly similar. My father didn't approve of magic either. I think it was because he couldn't understand it, but at any rate, I grew up in a mostly Muggle household."

"Didn't your mother despise him for making her do it?"

"A little, but the only thing she really hated my father for was over me. He never took to me like a father should and as a child I thought it was because I was a girl and he had really wanted a son. I was half right. He feared that I would be a witch like my mother more. He didn't come with us to England when we moved to come here. My mom and I never minded living as a Muggles. It made the magic that much more precious and special." She gave a weak smile to him before opening up her book again. He thought about disagreeing with her, but remembered the wonder of magic as a child and could understand the wonder and wanting to keep it rare.


End file.
